Post navigation

The Gentleman Angler

Before we moved to Alaska, we’d never seen fog flowing down mountains. I’m sure it happens elsewhere… This was one of those days of sunshine and patchy fog. Fog encircling the horizon. Fog pouring like a river through mountain gaps on Resurrection Bay.

I like foggy days. Fog means you can start late and not miss the bite. When it’s foggy, sometimes, big things happen late in the day.

By the time Barbra and I got our C-Dory fueled up and heading out into the bay, it was 10:30 A.M. Most of the fleet – both the charters and recreational boats – had long since left the docks. There was a time when I would have been with them – when I had to be on the water early. Dawn. Before dawn. Early early. Trout streams in Pennsylvania, striper rivers in South Carolina, sea bass beaches in Japan….

Most days, the early morning bite is the best.

Fog changes that.

Laid out on the dock are six silver salmon, eight rockfish, a couple of greenling, three small halibut, and a 35-pound lingcod. A couple of the salmon and the halibut didn’t make it into this photo. All of the fish were filleted, vacuum-packed and flash-frozen, ready to travel with us to Point Hope. I asked Barbra to name her favorite on the dinner table. “The variety,” she answered, without missing a beat. We didn’t get up early for these fish, and we didn’t run far.

We could get up earlier. We could run further. We could catch more fish and larger fish.

We know that.

At some point in my life, numbers and size stopped mattering so much. I still like to fish. But most of the time, most days, the fish that interest me the most are the ones that are still biting after I’ve had a good night’s sleep, breakfast, a leisurely mug of coffee (not in a to-go mug, but in my favorite mug at my breakfast table) and have read the news.

“We’re gentleman anglers,” my older friend and mentor Bill Kodrich explained to me. Forty years ago, we were in a cafe, me with a slice of blueberry pie, Bill with a slice of apple pie and a cup of coffee. It was about ten in the morning. We were headed for Spring Creek. I’d never been. I was eager to go. I thought we should have been there four hours ago.

“We don’t need to hurry,” Bill said with a characteristic smile. “There’ll still be trout in the stream when we get there.”